IRS-approved Private 501(c)(3) · EIN available on request · San Diego, CA
A working software platform · already shipping

I built this because I had no one. Now survivors get it free.

Huezo Rising is a private 501(c)(3) founded by an RE-4 discharge who finished an 8-year second-chance military contract, then taught himself how the wealthy build EIN-only credit. That hard-won knowledge was codified into a complete software platform — built independently by the founder over three years, then licensed to the nonprofit perpetually and royalty-free so survivors get the same system for free.

For funders → See the platform
3 years
Build time invested in the platform — by the founder, before the nonprofit existed.
90 days
From LLC filing to qualifying for EIN-only financing.
$0
What participants pay. Donors and grants fund delivery.
The unlock

I built this for myself first — because no one was going to build it for me.

Three years, including a full year of focused engineering, went into a complete software platform that walks a user through LLC formation, vendor-tier business credit, and EIN-only financing. The founder built it independently because he had to figure this out alone, and he wanted the next person to have what he didn't.

Then he licensed it to the nonprofit — perpetually, royalty-free. Survivors get the same platform that everyone else has to pay for. Your donation pays for the people who deliver it: intake, mentors, instructor stipends, materials, and on-the-ground support — not platform R&D, because the platform is already done.

01 · The methodology

It works because I lived it.

Filing → infrastructure → vendor-tier credit → EIN-only financing. This is the exact system the founder taught himself coming out of the military — the one that pulled him from RE-4 to a fundable, self-built business. Not theory. The path he actually walked, codified into software so the next person doesn't have to walk it alone.

02 · The platform

Built & ready.

Web, mobile, and desktop apps. Vendor tracking, Paydex monitoring, funding-readiness scoring. Licensed to Huezo Rising under a perpetual royalty-free agreement. No platform build cost on the nonprofit's books.

03 · The donation

Pays for delivery — not R&D.

Participant intake, instructor stipends, paid jobsite training through our staffing partner, materials for community service work, and the back-office that keeps it all funder-reportable.

How participants enter the program

Two tracks. One for skills they need to learn. One for skills they already have.

Incubator Track

High-impact. Hands-on. Paid.

For people learning a skilled trade from the ground up. Classroom education and LLC formation are delivered free by the nonprofit. On-the-job training is W-2 paid through our staffing partner — Huezo Rising Construction LLC, a separate for-profit employer entity.

  • · 6-month cohorts, 10–15 participants
  • · Classroom + LLC formation: free, delivered by nonprofit
  • · Jobsite hours: W-2 at legally required wage (state minimum on local jobs, federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage on federal contracts)
  • · Mentorship from licensed pros with lived experience
Accelerator Track

High-scale. Tech-driven. Nationwide.

For entrepreneurs who already have a marketable skill — barbers, mechanics, landscapers, contractors, anyone — but lack the legal business structure to be fundable. The LLC Blueprint™ does the heavy lifting at scale.

  • · 10+ participants/month, scaling to 100+
  • · Online — accessible from anywhere in the country
  • · Outcome: legal LLC, EIN, business credit, funding-ready
  • · Designed to plug into any case-manager's caseload
For any nonprofit, program, or community organization: if you serve people who could benefit from owning a real business with real credit, let's talk. The Accelerator Track was designed to plug into your existing intake — refer your clients in, see their outcomes back.
The structure, plainly

How participants get paid — and why two entities.

We separated the for-profit jobsite work from the nonprofit education on purpose — to protect donor dollars from jobsite liability and to keep wage-and-hour compliance unambiguous.

01 · Classroom & LLC formation

Free.

Delivered by Huezo Rising (the 501(c)(3)). Education, LLC formation, business credit coaching, EIN-only financing prep — all unpaid by the nonprofit, free for participants. This is the charitable program.

02 · Jobsite work

Paid W-2 at legal wage.

Delivered by Huezo Rising Construction LLC, a separate for-profit employer entity owned by the founder. State or local minimum on local jobs, federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage on federal contracts. Workers' comp, payroll, full employment-law compliance.

03 · Why two entities

Liability isolation.

Construction work has real jobsite risk — injury, property damage, OSHA exposure. Keeping that risk fully out of the nonprofit means donor dollars and program assets stay protected. The Construction LLC contracts exclusively with the nonprofit and staffs every job from program participants.

Conflict-of-interest disclosed annually on Form 990. Inter-entity contract reviewed by nonprofit counsel. The Construction LLC has no outside customers — its sole purpose is to serve as the legal employer for nonprofit participants.
Where the money goes

Every program day, participants are doing one of three things — never sitting idle.

Scenario 01

Paid contract work.

Real jobs the nonprofit secures — commercial, residential, government. Participants are W-2'd by the Construction LLC at the wage required by law for the job. Contract revenue offsets payroll and reduces grant reliance over time.

Scenario 02

Community service work.

When no contract work is available, participants identify community needs — fences, yards, repairs for neighbors, churches, and community organizations — and do the work free for the recipient. Grant funds pay participant wages and instructor stipends. Recipient pays nothing. Real charitable benefit, real paid training.

Scenario 03

Skills practice.

When neither contract work nor community work is available, participants train on real builds and supervised practice projects. Grant funds cover participant wages and instructor stipends; materials are sourced from program inventory or partners.

What grant dollars pay for, plainly
  • · Participant wages (legally required minimum, or Davis-Bacon prevailing wage on federal jobs)
  • · Instructor and RMO (responsible managing officer) stipends
  • · Materials for community service projects
  • · Construction LLC operational costs: insurance, bonding, licensing, tools, vehicles
  • · Participant intake, case-management, and outcomes reporting

No idle time. No unpaid labor. No charitable assets used for private benefit. Every hour is either paid work or paid training.

The 90-day roadmap

The same path the founder walked — step by step.

Every Accelerator Track participant moves through the same four-stage system the founder taught himself coming out of military service. Most reach Paydex 80 by week 10 and EIN-only financing approval between weeks 12 and 16.

01 · WEEK 1 · Formation

Pick a state. We file.

  • Articles submitted within 24h
  • Registered agent active day 1
  • LLC stamped in 5–10 days
02 · WEEKS 2–3 · Infrastructure

EIN, bank, address.

  • IRS EIN in 1 business day
  • Novo or Mercury connected
  • Real business street address
03 · WEEKS 4–10 · Credit

Work the vendor tiers.

  • Tier 1: 5 net-30 accounts
  • Tier 2: store cards & fleet
  • Tier 3: revolving business cards
04 · WEEKS 10–16 · Funding

Qualify and draw.

  • Lender matching (8+ partners)
  • Application packaging
  • First funding draw
Already built · Already shipping

Every grant gets a live impact dashboard.

Most workforce nonprofits send funders a quarterly PDF. We send funders a login. The dashboard ships in the LLC Blueprint™ platform today — funders see their cohort's outcomes in real time.

  • → Filter by grant demographic — see only your cohort
  • → Filter by period — all-time, this year, this month
  • → LLCs created, participants with business credit, tradelines opened
  • → Aggregate, anonymized — full FERPA / privacy compliance
This isn't a roadmap promise — it's already shipping. The Firebase function (getImpactStats) and Flutter dashboard are live in the platform repo today. Funders are provisioned with the grants role on request.
Grant Impact Statistics
● live
CATEGORY
veteran ▾
PERIOD
all_time ▾
LLCS CREATED
WITH BUSINESS CREDIT
TRADELINES OPENED
ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS
Counts populate as Cohort 1 begins. Dollar amounts deliberately hidden — funders see impact, not balance sheets.
Source: functions/grants/getImpactStats.js · role: grants
In-person pilot · online nationwide from day one

Nationwide from day one. In-person pilot in Imperial Valley.

The Accelerator Track is online and available nationwide from day one — any program, any case-manager, any state, anywhere in the country. The LLC Blueprint™ platform is built and shipping; participants log in and run the same 90-day path the founder walked, no matter where they live.

Imperial Valley is our in-person Incubator pilot — chosen on purpose as one of California's hardest-hit regions. If the hands-on model works here, it works anywhere we expand it next.

Top 5
Highest unemployment rate of any metro in California.
3
State and federal prisons within the county — high reentry population.
85%+
Latino/Hispanic population — historically underserved by capital access.
Border
Region with deep agricultural & logistics workforce in transition.
Ways to give

Every gift writes a different ending — for a survivor who never had one.

The platform is built. The methodology is proven. The 501(c)(3) is approved. What's left to fund is the human side: the people teaching it, the equipment they teach on, the wages we pay our trainees on real jobsites, and the reach that lets us deliver this nationwide.

Online sponsorship

Accelerator Track — one survivor.

Sponsor a participant through the online 90-day path: filing, EIN, real business address, banked, credit-built, ready for EIN-only financing. From "no business" to "fundable business" — anywhere in the country.

In-person sponsorship

Incubator Track — full cohort.

Underwrite a hands-on construction cohort: six months of training with W-2 wages on real jobsites, classroom education, certifications, and the formed business at the end. Real paid training, real outcomes.

Equipment & operations

Tools, vehicles, RMO, insurance.

Fund the operational backbone — licensed Responsible Managing Officer (RMO) compensation, jobsite tools and equipment, trucks, materials, insurance, bonding, and the staff who run intake and case management.

Major & multi-year

Endow the mission. Open a region.

Major gifts, multi-year commitments, and chapter-level partnerships let us scale nationwide, fund regional pilots in your community, expand the impact dashboard, and reach survivors who'll never see this offered anywhere else.

Every gift is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. To discuss a sponsored cohort, named recognition, multi-year commitment, donor-advised fund grant, matching campaign, or in-kind support (vehicles, tools, equipment), reach out at [email protected].
Where we are right now

We're pre-program. Our first cohort starts when our first funder says yes.

We're not pretending to be further along than we are. We're a young 501(c)(3) with a working software platform, a proven methodology, a separate for-profit employer entity, and a founder with lived experience. What we don't have yet — by design — is a cohort. That's what we're raising for.

What's already in place
  • ✓ IRS-approved private 501(c)(3)
  • ✓ Perpetual royalty-free license to LLC Blueprint™
  • ✓ Working web + mobile + desktop platform
  • ✓ A founder who walked the path himself — methodology proven by lived experience
  • ✓ Live grant impact dashboard (already shipping in the platform)
  • ✓ Separate for-profit Construction LLC for jobsite liability isolation
  • ✓ Founder with lived experience and a reproducible track record
What we're recruiting
  • → First Incubator cohort: 10–15 participants in our Imperial Valley pilot
  • → Accelerator Track ramp: 10+ entrepreneurs/month, scaling to 100+ nationwide
  • → Anchor funder for cohort #1
  • → Partner case-managers nationwide (any program serving any underserved population)
  • → Board members with workforce-dev or financial-inclusion background
F
PORTRAIT FORTHCOMING
Why this matters

Founder lived experience isn't a marketing line. It's the program design. Every demographic Huezo Rising Foundation serves — formerly incarcerated, separated military, single dads, foster youth, low-income — I lived a version of it. I'm a single dad.

Founder's story · in his own words

I'm not building this from research. I'm building it from my own life.

I was in the foster system for a stretch as a kid before going back to my mother. I had my first child a few months after I turned 18, and joined the U.S. military soon after. It didn't end the way I wanted it to. I came home with an RE-4 discharge — the kind that's supposed to close the door on you for good.

I didn't accept that. I went to work in my community as a youth advocate, earned commendation letters from local leadership, enrolled in Job Corps, and had old tattoos removed — every visible and invisible thing I needed to change, I changed. Then the National Guard granted me a second chance. I'm one of the few people they reinstate after an RE-4. I deployed with KFOR 11 in Kosovo, and to Iraq in 2011–2012. I'm the only one in that second-chance group to complete the full 8-year contract. I separated honorably in 2013.

After that I paid thousands out of pocket to learn how the wealthy build EIN-only credit — knowledge nobody hands to people coming out of foster care, prison, or the military. I spent three years turning that knowledge into a complete software platform, then licensed it to Huezo Rising — perpetual and royalty-free — so survivors who'll never be able to pay retail get the same system for free.

Every demographic this nonprofit serves — formerly incarcerated, separated military, single dads, foster youth, low-income — is a community I've been part of. I'm a single dad raising a child while building this. The support we offer is the support I needed and didn't have.

Foster care, briefly
Then back to my mother. Aged into the rest on my own.
First child at 18
A few months after my eighteenth birthday.
U.S. military
Enlisted soon after my son was born. Discharged RE-4.
Came home and got to work
Youth advocate. Community organizer. Letters of commendation from local leadership.
Job Corps
Skills, structure, and tattoo removal — every visible and invisible thing that needed to change.
National Guard · second chance
One of the few RE-4 recipients granted reinstatement. Got the second chance and used every minute of it.
KFOR 11 · Kosovo
Deployed with the eleventh rotation.
Iraq · 2011–2012
Second deployment.
8-year contract · completed
The only one in the second-chance group to finish the full contract. Honorable separation, 2013.
Built the platform
Three years and a full year of focused engineering. The system I taught myself, turned into software.
Founded Huezo Rising
Private 501(c)(3). Licensed the entire platform — perpetual, royalty-free — so survivors get it free.
For funders

Fund cohort #1. Or partner with us — anywhere in the country.

If you're a foundation officer, family-office principal, CDFI, or workforce-dev funder — let's talk. We'll send the funder packet, give you a live demo of the platform, and show you the dashboard your grant would populate.

Schedule a 20-min funder call Request the funder packet (PDF) See the platform in action (demo)
Stay close

Cohort updates, one email a month.

Real-time impact dashboard for funders. For everyone else: a single monthly note about cohort progress, partner news, and how the program is actually performing. No spam.

Contact

Partner with us. Refer a participant. Ask a question.